


Rainsong

by AcceleratedStall



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen, Getting to know your weapon merchant, Mid-Canon, Rain, Slice of Life, Subtextual Musings on Creativity?, Tea, Where did Protag learn to swordfight anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22090588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcceleratedStall/pseuds/AcceleratedStall
Summary: A quiet, rainy afternoon in Inaba. With swords.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Rainsong

The last notes out of Yu’s trumpet and Matsunaga’s trombone fall on an empty school building. Practice ran late - not because they were playing badly, but because they were playing well. It’s those last little pieces before perfect that are hardest to find, and most compelling to chase. Well, there’s always next week. Yu snaps his instrument back into its case and moves to help Ayane close up the music room; it’s a familiar process at this point, and little conversation is necessary.

The windows in that room must be thicker than the ones in the rest of the school; the hallways carry the drumbeat of falling rain, at a volume Yu hadn’t noticed before. It’s enough to trigger some vague, half-forgotten anxiety in the back of his mind - but it’s okay. A terse text message from Naoto confirms her welfare, and he knows there’s nobody else in the TV right now.

At the shoe lockers, Ayane tells him she has a ride waiting; something about visiting family in Shizuoka. So Yu bids her farewell, and watches through water-smeared glass as she dashes out the door to meet a car at the gate, its headlights catching a flickering beam of falling raindrops.

Now alone, Yu opens his umbrella and steps outside. There’s no long shadows in the dull overcast, but it’s still getting dark; night will probably fall before he gets home.

It’s different here in Inaba. Back in the city, no one seemed to want the rain to interrupt them; the sidewalks were always a raft of brightly colored umbrellas, and the streets glowed red with the reflected taillights of cars. In this place, though, the streets are all but empty, like the whole town decided this rainstorm was the perfect chance to stop, pause a while, and maybe get some thinking done. The only sounds are of the rain; water gushing through a storm drain, the patter of raindrops on his umbrella, even the noise his shoe makes as he steps into a puddle. (On a more prosaic note, Yu reminds himself he’ll have to put some dry socks on once he’s home.)

The shopping district is wrapped in blue-black twilight; pale off-white streetlights scatter reflections across the wet pavement. In the light, or on a less wet day, there would be still be enough activity here to make all the closed shops easy to overlook; now, it feels like a ghost town. It’s worth wondering if Junes is empty right now as well; if Yosuke hears the same quiet under its bright fluorescent lights.

After a few minutes more thought, Yu is interrupted by a warm orange light spilling out onto the sidewalk; he has reached Daidara Metalworks, and the old man didn’t even close his door for the rain. Tilting his umbrella out of the way to one side, Yu leans inquiringly inside.

Apparently he lingers a moment too long. A voice from elsewhere in the shop yells “You going to just keep getting wet out there?” Yu shrugs, folds his umbrella, and steps through the door.

“Didn’t realize you stayed open this late,” Yu muses as Daidara emerges from a back room to meet him at the counter.

“Hmm, I usually don’t,” Daidara answers, “but I get into a rhythm with the sound of the rain. Lose track of time.” He looks Yu up and down through his left eye, the rest of his face turned slightly away.

“My furnace out back is still hot. Could dry off those wet shoes pretty well,” he offers.

It’s true that there’s a damp chill crawling up from Yu’s feet into his bones, but there’s too much to do at home for him to be stuck downtown with no shoes.

“Afraid I can’t stay too long,” Yu replies after a moment.

“I understand. Tea?”

“Uh, sure, thank you.” Daidara nods approvingly and turns away to set a kettle up in his fireplace.

The firelight plays off the smooth lacquer finish of layered armor plates; a steel blade is polished to a glowing-white sheen. In the corner sits a longbow with matching quiver of arrows, its length comfortably exceeding Teddie or Rise’s height; its careful, subtle curvature is so finely crafted that Yu finds himself wishing his team had an archer.

Daidara turns back to Yu and pours hot water into two teacups; as it steeps, Yu asks, “So why weapons?”

“Having someone buy them all helps,” Daidara chuckles.

“Point taken. Still, before I showed up.”

Daidara scratches red stubble on his chin. “I suppose…” he trails off, then starts again. “It keeps me thinking.”

Yu raises his teacup to his lips, then lowers it again as the steam wafts past his face; it’s not quite ready yet. Daidara continues. “For a truly functional weapon, one you could trust with your life in a battle, the margin for error is really quite thin. A blade must be sharp but not brittle. A chest plate like this-“ - he holds up an unfinished armor piece, running his fingers along a metal crease down its center - “can deflect a blow, but only if this angle is just right. Even the steel itself is a delicate mixture - all too easily spoiled.” His good eye darts momentarily towards the back of the shop with a faintly guilty smile.

“And yet, with care,” Daidara says, looking past Yu to the shelves filled with his handiwork, “it’s still possible to make something beautiful. _That_ is the challenge. Few who have commissioned me have ever been so demanding.”

He sighs and takes a sip of tea; Yu watches him from the other side of the counter. The sound of falling rain floats in through the front door of the shop, still open.

Daidara seems to bristle at Yu’s gaze. “You don’t have to take that too seriously, you know. I just have to take motivation where I can find it, at my age.”

“It’s interesting, actually. Thank you,” Yu replies.

Daidara doesn’t immediately acknowledge the comment, seemingly absorbed in his tea.

“In truth, there is one other reason,” he says, more quietly and slowly; he rubs two fingers against the point where the old scar across his cheek intersects with the corner of his jaw.

“Hmm?” Yu puts down his teacup.

Suddenly Daidara stands up, and takes one of the swords down from the wall.

“Would you show me?” he asks, offering the weapon to Yu. “How you fight.”

Yu pauses. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

Daidara levels a pointed stare first outside at the empty, rain-drenched street, then at Yu, cocking an eyebrow in skepticism.

“Fair enough,” Yu concedes, but does not pick up the sword.

“The more I know about how it’s used, the better a blade I can make,” Daidara explains. He looks Yu sharply in the eye. “And my blades _are_ being used, I’m sure of it.”

Yu appraises Daidara with a stare of his own; the question “where are you going with this?” remaining unstated, though perhaps visible on his face regardless.

“Not anywhere around here, of course,” Daidara continues. “It’s a small town - that would have been obvious months ago. No, you’ve shown me things that can’t be found in Inaba - or anywhere else in Japan, for that matter.”

“Oh, those?” Yu presumes Daidara to be referring to the pieces of Shadow he habitually retrieves from the TV world.

“You needn’t tell me the particulars. It’s a rare gift you have. You aren’t the first to receive it - but it would still be a shame to lose. All the more so if you were simply lacking the correct tools.”

Yu hesitates for another moment, then pulls the sword from its sheath. He studies it with care; the hilt is a hand-and-a-half length, the blade has a single edge and a slow, even curve. Leaving the sheath on Daidara’s counter, Yu starts with a one-handed grip, but it doesn’t feel right; the blade is too long, with too much mass too far from his wrist. Instead he takes the hilt in both hands, shifting between a few different stances; out of the corner of one eye, he sees Daidara take a charcoal pencil from next to the cash register as he watches intently.

One more deep breath, and Yu is ready. He takes a half-step forward; a simple form, to start with. The blade flashes through the air in two smooth rising and falling strokes, before returning to an imaginary sheath at Yu’s waist. Daidara says nothing; the only sound to be heard is the rain outside.

Yu continues; a more complex exercise, this time, performed faster. Two targets, to his left and right; the goal is to strike both without leaving an opening for either. Four strokes now, fast but careful, _never overcommit_. He’s loosened up now; the tip of the sword begins to flow through the air.

Now he pictures foes around him - those samurai-like Shadows, or maybe the big lancer ones. The words in Yu’s head fragment and fall away, leaving gestures in their place. Left. Down. Parry. Half-turn. The metal in his hands lightens until it it is a mere stick, a feather on the wind. Hearts rise within his own - Izanagi. Hanuman. Siegfried. Yoshitsune. He moves, quicker and quicker, to the rhythm of a music inside his mind.

The moment passes; the music stops. The tip of the sword slows to a stop in front of Yu’s nose. Another deep breath. Finally a voice breaks through the patter and hiss of falling rain. “Thank you,” says Daidara, two meters and a light-year away. The paper in front of him is covered in charcoal sketches - figures in action, hilts, blades, little diagrams. The effect is a little disorienting - Yu didn’t feel like his demonstration had taken long, yet here was an entire page of drawings that must have been made while he was carrying it out.

His gaze lingers on the sketches as Yu slides the sword back into its sheath and lays it down in front of Daidara.

“Just preliminaries,” the old man explains, having noticed Yu’s curiosity. “I’ll see how many amount to something.”

“You’re pretty fast,” Yu notes in response.

“Practice.”

The conversation might have continued, but Yu feels his phone hum buried deep in a pocket. The incoming number, of course, he recognizes very well.

“You’re late, big bro.” A familiar, largely cheerful voice, leavened by a tinny speaker, bursts into his ear.

“I’m sorry, Nanako,” Yu begins. “Practice ran late.”

“You still have to play for me sometime!” The phone connection flattens out the nuances in Nanako’s voice, but Yu can still pick it up in traces; Dojima isn’t home yet, and she’s lonely.

“You have my word,” Yu answers solemnly. Nanako giggles on the other end of the line.

Restoring his voice to a more casual tone, Yu adds, “Could you have some dry socks out for me when I get in?”

“Yep!”

“Thanks. See you soon.” An indistinct shuffling sound comes through the receiver of Yu’s cell phone - he can only presume Nanako is trying to wrestle the phone back on to the hook on the other end.

He drops his phone back into his pocket, and adjusts his jacket, turning toward the open door and the rain.

“I was going to urge you along to go home, seeing as I have work to do,” Daidara says, a laugh getting lost in his rough-hewn cheeks and red sideburns, “but I think that phone call did a better job of it than I was going to.”

Yu smiles. “I think you’re right.”

At the door, as Yu reaches to open his umbrella, Daidara calls out to him. “See you soon!” The craftsman picks up the sword Yu left on his counter, holding it deliberately in front of his dirty smock. “…and good luck.”

**Author's Note:**

> The root of this strange little nothing of a fic is when I used to just wander around listening to the sound effects on rainy days in Persona 4. It's very meditative. As for the rest - a couple ideas I came across reading other people's work, some speculating on Daidara's past experiences, others playing with the idea of watching the Investigation Team from the outside, which I really found interesting. Hope you liked.


End file.
